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Four score and seven
years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are
created equal.
Now we are engaged in
a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or
any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long
endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that
war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that
field, as a final resting place for those who here
gave their lives that that nation might live. It is
altogether fitting and proper that we should do
this.
But in a larger
sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we
cannot hallow this ground. The brave men--living and
dead--who struggled here, have consecrated it, far
above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will little
note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it
can never forget what they did here. It is for us
the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the
unfinished work which they who fought here have thus
far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us
to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
before us: that from these honoured dead we take
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave
the last full measure of devotion; that we here
highly resolve that these dead shall not have died
in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a
new birth of freedom; and that government
of the people, by the people, for the people,
shall not perish from the earth.
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